Hey hey hey everybody! The whole gang is back for another tangent filled episode of the CAMcast! Yes, Pizza Dad came back for another one, and it was timely, for there was a Grand Prix to discuss! We also covered

Polestar’s cryptic social media posts

The first FIA Intercontinental Drifting Cup, and the future of the event

More favorite Top Gear moments

Our faces are literally on shirts now

And we talk over each other

Thank you for joining us on this adventure in staying on topic. If you haven’t, subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, and wherever else you find us. And rate and review us while you’re at it! We’ll be back next week with more shenanigans, and perhaps we’ll stay on topic!

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Four men enter, one podcast leaves! Welcome back to the CAMcast ladies, gentlemen, and 1997 Ford Tauruses. Mike and Dave are joined by Rick Conk and Michael “Pumpkin” Nielsen from RallySport Direct! The gang go off on many tangents, and hit a few agenda items, including:

Joest joining up with Mazda to revamp their DPi program

Formula Drift went to Canada

Formula One went to England

NASA Utah happened over the weekend

Electric and hybrid vehicles

Creating the most unlimited form of motorsport

Why you should never drive distracted

Thank you for joining us! Stream the episode above, download it here, or subscribe via RSS. Take a few minutes to rate us and leave a comment on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever else you find us. Buy a shirt, and help us keep this train a rolling. And tell a few friends about us! We’ll be back next week, see you then.

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Ahoy hoy folks! We’re so glad you could join us for another episode of the CAMcast. This week we were down a Pizza Dad, but chock full of stuff to talk about:

Geneva Auto Show highlights

Lamborghini’s video shenanigans

Salt City Drift schedule

Driving a BOSS 302 Laguna Seca in Las Vegas

And why you should probably avoid the Hooter’s Hotel and Casino

We appreciate you guys subscribing, rating, commenting, sharing, and interacting with this podcast. Please keep doing all of that, and maybe pitch this to someone who doesn’t really listen to podcasts? The #trypod campaign is in full swing this month, and it’s main purpose is to introduce podcasts to people who don’t listen to them, or don’t know what they are. Odds are that you know someone who’d like us, but doesn’t know the how’s and what’s and all of that. Spread the word!

The CAMcast crew managed to survive those last, rough weeks of 2016, and are back in this new year with a new podcast for your ears!

In this episode Dave, Gavin, Brandon, and Me (me being Mike, sorry for all the coughing) tell you what races to watch this year, where to find them, and we ramble on about some other stuff. It’s mostly the racing stuff though. Give us a listen! You can stream the episode here, get it on iTunes, or download it here.

We mention some YouTube channels where you can watch races either live, or after their air date. Here’s a brief list:

Words and Photos by Michael Chandler

SEMA was over! Oh glory it was over! We love going to SEMA, but good lord it gets tedious after a few days. You see amazing cars, but you see them sitting still. Static. Yes, you can admire the craftsmanship (or lack thereof in some cases), but you don’t get to see them do anything. Thankfully, there was a VegasDrift event the day after the show closed. Earlier in the week we helped Jason Smith get prepared for the event, so we figured we’d pop in and say hi.

It took a few hours, but we eventually did see Jason. Before we did though, we saw Ian Perri. It was nice to see him, and it was nice to see him drift in person.

Blaize Potts came down, started a small fire, and did some skids.

That’s not Scott, that’s Brandon! Yes, Brandon Wicknick was driving a V8 car. Will he see the light that is low end torque, and not having to wait for the power to come on? God willing, he won’t.

WOOBOI! We managed to survive another SEMA, and a highly compressed SEMA experience at that. If you remember, we missed out on Tuesday AND Wednesday, so we had to cram four days worth of the show into two. Not ideal, but I think we did a good job. We also didn’t die in the process.

In this episode Joey and I eat pizza, have some beers, and tell you about our experience at the show, inhaling an entire tire at Ignited, and some other stuff. We’ll be back next week with another, less SEMA-centric episode.

The SEMA show is open for four days. Joey and I were only around for the last two days of it. I wouldn’t recommend cramming four days of automotive ridiculousness into two. Really burns you out fast. Anyway, here’s some shots from the last day of the show, the roll out parade to Ignited, and a Formula D drift demo that featured Mike Essa, Odi Bakchis, Ryan Litteral, Dean Kearney, Kyle Mohan, and Alex Heilbrunn. Enjoy!

*Article and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners.

CAUTION: OPINIONS AHEAD

A few years ago Niki Lauda suggested that for F1 to be more exciting, they needed to go to wider tires and bigger wings and lots more horsepower. Basically, turn the clock back to when he was racing. He’s not the first person to suggest going back to “the old ways”. When the new turbo motors came out, everyone complained and wanted to go back to the V10 era. Was the V10 era that much better? Were the 70’s the peak of F1?

People in drifting have some thoughts on the current state of the sport as well. There was a time where 500 horsepower was considered a lot, and the steering mods you needed were rack spacers and modified knuckles. Now the top Formula D cars make around 800 horsepower, completely redesigned steering components for crazy amounts of angle, and over fenders on over fenders to cover the tires because the steering mods have pushed the wheels so far out from their original location. But were the lower power, simpler days so much better than today?

Back in the day, you could fix damn near any car with nothing more than a socket set and a bucket of carb cleaner. The bodies were made of steel, and they were designed by guys with slide rulers and very little understanding of aerodynamics. Modern cars are massive compared to the old cars, and the technology is so deeply embedded in every aspect of them that working on them is nearly impossible. But were the old steel bodied classics better than the stuff you can drive off a dealer’s lot?

Well… No. Modern race cars are demonstrably faster, more efficient and safer than their old counter parts, drifting has graduated from “a bunch of idiots in a parking lot” to a legitimate motorsport, and modern cars are faster, safer, more efficient, and better equipped than the designers ever thought cars could be. When Niki Lauda won his first World Championship in 1975, he turned a 1:26.40 lap in qualifying. In 2011 Sebastian Vettel ran a 1:13.556.

With more knowledge and data, the Formula D cars are moving through the courses faster and making more tire smoke. Couple that with the amount of angle the drivers are using going through the corners, and you have something far more interesting to watch than what was happening in 2007.

Modern cars are heavier and bigger because they have more stuff in them. Stuff like multiple air bags and other safety equipment, infotainment systems that play your Pandora stations and read your text messages to you! In 1975, a V8 Camaro 13 mpg in the city and 19 on the highway. A 2016 Camaro does 16 mpg in the city and 25 on the highway. The humble Corolla went from 21/33 forty-one years ago to 28/37 now. Modern cars of all varieties are demonstrably better. But why do we keep holding up examples from the past? In my opinion, it’s a familiarity issue.

Let me try to explain this with an analogy. Michael Jordan is the best basketball player I’ve ever seen. I say this because I watched him for more than a third of my life. I saw him win multiple championships, MVP awards, and even a gold medal. Now if you were to ask someone ten years younger than me, they probably wouldn’t say MJ was the best. They’d probably say Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James, or even Steph Curry is the best. Why? Because they watched them at their peaks, like I did with Jordan. That hypothetical person grew up knowing only an old MJ and young, rising talents in LeBron, Steph and Kobe. Now replace MJ and LeBron with an AE86 and a new FRS/BRZ. The Corolla was amazing, but that’s not the hero car for the new generation. It’s legendary, and they know about the old Corolla; but, the FRS/BRZ has been around since some of these kids became aware of cars and their coolness.

Same with F1. Some people came into the sport WITH the turbo V6s, and have no idea about the previous eras. There are countless hoards of people out there that are convinced that to have a fun drift car you need a high horsepower 2JZ or LS, all of the Wisefab you can get your hands on, and as much fender as one can fit on a car. And let’s be honest, spending an hour in stop and go traffic in a car with weak A/C, a semi-functioning tape deck, and an ever falling fuel needle isn’t as good a place to be as a car where you can throw it in D, crank up the A/C, listen to your Spotify playlist of choice, and not having to stop for gas at every exit. It’s easy to look at the past with rose colored spectacles, but you can’t deny that things are better now than they used to be.

*Article and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners.

I missed the F1 race (How about Haas, eh?), and the 24H series race at Silverstone. I’m not too torn up about it, but I’ve got a hankering for some racing! Today I listened to some highlights of the Silverstone race on Radio Le Mans, but I want to watch something damnit! What to do? Well, there are a number of options available.

The 24H Series has all of their races on their YouTube page, and the fine folks at NISMO have a ton of races on their page as well. Is DTM more your flavor? You can watch every race and qualifying session from the 2015 season! If judged motorsports are more your flavor, you can check out the 2016 D1GP and Formula D events, with English commentary on the D1 stuff by Alexi from Nori Yaro, over on the Scrapeddd YouTube page.

There’s a lot for you to watch, and I’m conveniently showing this to you in the middle of the day… Hmm, I wounder what could ever come of this…

*Article and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners.